Phylogenetic Analysis of the Family Vespertilionidae in China Based on Mitochondrial 16S rRNA Partial Sequence

The family Vespertilionidae is the largest family of bats,and its members are distributed throughout most of the world.There is a long-standing controversy regarding the systematic relationships within the family,although most studies involving morphology,embryology,and recent molecular data have proposed that the subfamily,Miniopterinae,should be elevated to full familial status and the genus Myotis should be in its own subfamily,Myotinae.In this study,we determined the mitochondrial partial sequences of the 16S rRNA from 38 individuals in 11 species from Vespertilionidae and constructed phylogenetic trees by further including 13 species from 13 genera in 7 families of bats examined in other studies.The results supported the status of the putative family,Miniopteridae and the subfamily Myotinae,and suggested that the clade containing Vespertilioninae and Antrozoinae were paraphyletic relative to the clade consisting of Myotinae,Kerivoulinae and Murininae.